My first stop in Cambodia was at a local market that sold “strange”food. I was secretly hoping it would sell snake, since I have been trying to have a snake’s blood vodka since I got to Vietnam. Apparently snakes are for men, so every time I go to a store that is supposed to sell snake, I am told that there is no snake on the menu today. The Vietnamese believe the snake’s blood gives virility to men, but makes women too masculine. I don’t believe any of that, I just wanted to try it because I saw it on TV.

the closest I got to snake blood vodka- snakes fermented in rice wine: GROSS

Unfortunately, this market did not sell snake, but it did have an abundance of other delicacies to try. For one dollar, I got a bag of four fried tarantulas. They looked disgusting, but tasted kind of like beef jerky. While I was biting off the legs one by one, the vendor decided to put a live tarantula on me. I told her that wasn’t a good idea, since he would probably be upset since I was eating his brother. She told me not to worry, it wouldn’t bite me. Then another vendor (aka ten year old girl who should have been in school) grabbed my hand and told me not to be afraid. She promised to hold my hand until both spiders were gone.

the vendor putting a live spider on me for no particular reason..

the vendor holding my hand to help me eat the spider

so many delicious choices

After the spider, I decided to give some deep-fried crickets a try. They were much more tasty, kind of like a crunchy fried bean or nut. It was a bit difficult to get them down, however, when I thought too much about it. The market also had other specialties like frogs stuffed with something weird that I didn’t want to try. Some one else gave them a taste and said they weren’t bad except for having all of the bones still in them. Our tour guide said, ”Of course, that makes them crunchy!” No one got sick from the strange market food, but almost everyone on the tour has been sick from eating in the tourist restaurants here. I haven’t been to a McDonald’s since India, but I’m starting to wish there were a few more around!

cricket =-(

I have just survived 10 days in Vietnam, mostly by pretending to be Canadian. I’m not sure why I thought people in Vietnam would like Americans; maybe because everyone I know who’s been to Vietnam always talks about how friendly the people there are- but then I realized I don’t actually know any Americans who have been to Vietnam. Only Brits and Canadians. And it turns out the Vietnamese don’t really like Americans at all. But luckily for me, I am traveling with mostly Canadians and can sing enough of “Oh Canada” to camouflage myself.

 

My trip in Vietnam started with a few days in Hanoi and an overnight cruise on Ha Long bay. The tour leader on our boat told me his parents had fought with the Viet Cong, but I expected that the North might have more than a few bad memories of the war. In preparation for this,  I taught myself the words to “Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh, Moon Nham, Moon Nham” which is basically a song about “May Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam exist forever.” In any interactions with Vietnamese people, I could sing a chorus of this and at least get a discount on souvenir tee-shirts.

 

I also managed to fit in a trip to the Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, where Ho Chi Minh is preserved for all eternity in a special glass box guarded by loads of soldiers. The main job of the soldiers seems to be yelling at tourists, especially for things like crossing your arms, or clasping one wrist with your hand. Apparently these types of body language are very disrespectful to Ho Chi Minh’s dead body.

 

After Hanoi I headed south and thought perhaps my reception as an American would be somewhat warmer… Wrong. Every tour guide or local I met had either had parents in the Viet Cong or blamed America for everything wrong with Vietnam today. In Saigon I got to check out the “War Remnants Museum” which was formerly known as the “The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Crimes of Southern Vietnam.” You can guess what kind of exhibits that museum had to offer…

 

I also got to tour the Chu Chi tunnels in the Saigon area and watch a stunning documentary about “America Killer #1”, a 16 year-old school girl who liked to lob grenades at passing American soldiers. It was really a bit stomach-churning. Then after the documentary the tour guide took us to the see the tunnels and expressed his disbelief that the evil Americans would try to find them and bomb them. I have to say, if “America-Killer #1” was after me, I would sure as heck try to find her secret command center and bomb it, and I don’t think anyone could be surprised by that outcome.

 

In any event, I am safely across the border in Cambodia. I’m not sure I’m safe from the Communist propaganda, but at least I can use facebook again. Viet Nam is apparently borrowing technology from China and completely blocking facebook and other “questionable sites.”  All I can say to that is, “Long live capitalism!”

In Laos I finally got to attend Mahout Training School. A Mahout is an elephant rider, and I had been trying to learn elephant riding since Nepal where my wart-footed guide told me it was unsafe. In Laos there were no safety warnings at all, as long as you were willing to pay, preferably in American dollars.

I signed up for Mahout school with my new British friend Vicky, and we headed off into the Laotian jungle with plenty of bug spray. We joined up with a Belgium man and put on our special Mahout gear, which consisted of denim capris and shirts, one size fits all better than some… Then we met our special elephant command teacher. He went through a list of Lao commands with us for about thirty minutes and whenever we tried to pronounce them, he would tell us we were completely wrong in our pronunciation and would never be able to stop a rampaging elephant. So we would try again, and he would again just shake his head in disbelief that we could not correctly speak Lao.

elephant commands

After a half hour of being ridiculed by our Lao teacher, we went to meet our elephants with phonetic cheat sheets tucked in our denim pockets. I was assigned to Pancake, a 38 year-old female elephant who was significantly taller than either Vicky or the Belgian’s elephant. I chose to believe I was lucky to have an older, experienced elephant. I believed that right up until the moment my mahout “assistant” (aka trained mahout who would actually control the elephant, since my Lao commands were apparently incomprehensible) told me that Pancake was too old to bend down for me to mount her.  Instead, I would need to grab her ear and clamber up the elephant’s leg. Let me assure you that this was one of the most ungraceful moments of my life. Whereas Vicky and the Belgian commanded their elephants to sit down and climbed gracefully atop them, I fell down twice before the Mahout grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

not-so-gracefully mounting Pancake

Once atop Pancake, I straddled her neck and used my legs to direct her left and right. In reality, the mahout assistant behind me and his hooked weapon probably got her to move, but I chose to believe in the illusion. In any case, I was riding an elephant bareback through the jungle! All went well until it came time to cross a dirt road and my mahout assistant informed me that Pancake was afraid of cars- “You like see elephant run?” Me: “um… NO! I like this speed just fine.” Luckily there was only one jeep on the road so Pancake only freaked out a little bit.

Pancake and I cross the road

 

We made it safely to the river, where we got to participate in elephant bathing. My mahout assistant informed me that all elephants play differently in the water. In the training session we learned the command for the elephant to blow water out of her trunk, “boun-boun.” Both Vicky and the Belgian were successful in getting their elephants to spray them and splash about.  When I said “boun-boun” to Pancake she ignored me, and my mahout admitted that she was a bit ‘strong-willed’ and didn’t like to spray. The next thing I know Pancake plunges straight into the river, directly toward some floating elephant dung. Just as I opened my mouth and shouted “Pancake, not towards the poop” (surprisingly the training school did not teach us this phrase in Lao), she plunged completely underwater with me on top of her. I got a mouth full of river poop water before she resurfaced.  Apparently, Pancake liked to dive as opposed to something so lame as spraying water.

Diving with Pancake

After a half hour of swimming time, we rode our elephants into the jungle and said goodbye. I can’t say that I actually learned any Lao and I certainly couldn’t control an elephant in the future. But I did get to ride an elephant bareback and go swimming with it- TOTALLY WORTH IT!

I am currently in Laos, a landlocked country between Thailand and Vietnam which has the dubious distinction of being the most-bombed country in the history of the world. Getting here from Thailand began with an overnight train from Bangkok. This train was infinitely nicer than any train in India (no mice, no cockroaches, no leprous beggars) and we even had a train steward, Natalie. Natalie was one of the infamous “lady-boys” of Thailand, but she was more like a lady-man. No one would be confused about her original sex, but she did her best to camouflage it with high heels and skirts. She asked for make-up tips from one of the girls on our trip, but I think the only tip she really needed was to use her razor!

After the train journey, we headed toward the Mekong river, which is the main source of transportation in Laos. We got into a longboat to cross the border and slowly make our way downstream towards Luang Prabang, stopping along the way to check out the “sights.” Mostly we just stopped at villages where half-naked people looked at our tennis shoes like they had never seen anything like it in their life. Quite possibly they hadn’t, as most of them were shoeless.

The slow boat down the Mekong

 

The locals checking us out as we step off the boat

 

In the evenings we stopped in small towns where we stayed in the nicest hotels available- usually about 30 dollars a room for “luxury”! I decided to give a Laos massage a chance, especially since it was even cheaper here than in Thailand- $5 an hour. This time my masseuse was a 19 year-old boy. The massage actually seemed to follow similar patterns to the Thai massage, except that the boy used his knees instead of his elbow. Overall the only difference between Thai massage and Laos massage was that it didn’t involve so much pain. He still tried to crack my toes, but this time I asserted myself and refused. He even tried to strike up a conversation, but it was amazing how quickly it stopped when I told him I was 30..

So far Laos, the “Jewel of the Mekong” is pretty amazing. I fed rice to monks this morning. They only get to eat twice a day, at sunrise and just before noon. They get their food by walking through the streets with bowls. The locals kneel on mats by the road and put rice and eggs and bananas into their baskets as they pass. The only slightly annoying part was that males are allowed to sit upright on their knees when feeding the monks, whereas women have to remain lower than men and sit on their heels. I guess no religion is perfect.

Giving breakfast to the monks (left), as street children (right)beg from the monks

 And now I’m off to ride elephants! I know… it’s a hard life ;-)

 

Every traveler who has been to Thailand’s beautiful islands raves about getting cheap daily massages on the beach. I’ve never gotten an official massage before, mostly just because they are so expensive, so I was looking forward to trying this out for myself. I am currently staying on Haad Yao beach on Koh Pha Ngan island. There’s a massage platform every five meters along the beach. When you take a walk, you are constantly being asked “Some massage for you, lady?”  The going rate for Thai massage is 250 baht for one hour, which is about $8. Quite a bargain compared to a one hour massage in the US, so once again I was compelled to give it a try.

The beach at Kho Pha Ngan

 

Stacy and I decided to get a sunset massage so that we wouldn’t waste any valuable beach time during the day and so that we would be relaxed for the evening and ready for sleep. This seemed to be the most popular time to get a massage and we had to walk a ways down the beach before we found a place with two openings.  [I had a bit of a Seinfeld moment when we arrived because as we lay down the two Thai women were talking about something (I’m assuming us) and laughing. It was exactly like when Elaine goes to the nail salon and brings Mr. Costanza to interpret since she knows the manicurists are talking about her… I didn’t have any interpreter, but I just blocked it out of my mind and prepared to relax and enjoy my first ever massage.

It began with the Thai woman kneading my legs a bit painfully, but I don’t really stretch all that often so Stacy had warned me that the massage might be a bit intense since my muscles were probably really tight. Then the Thai woman sat on my legs and started using her elbow to abuse my back. That was definitely not the peaceful back massage I had been imagining. Then the woman was grabbing my leg and cracking my toes one by one while putting her foot against my thigh and pulling. That definitely seemed odd. I kept looking over at Stacy, and her masseuse was not doing any of these strange positions. Towards the end, my masseuse put me into some yoga positions and then sat on me to “intensify” the stretch. There was one nice moment when she gave me a face massage and combed her fingers through my hair, but the rest was like a really painful yoga class.

At the end of the hour, I lay there looking at the sunset, telling myself that even though it had been painful, it would all be worth it. I would get up off the mat and feel amazing and so relaxed even if I had been tense throughout the massage. Instead, when I got off the mat I was limping because of the way my masseuse had used her elbow to “massage” the arch of my foot. My whole body was in pain and I had to go back to my cabana and have a full body stretch before bed. Even then I woke up multiple times during the night because I had bruises on my back from the crazy woman’s elbow and I kept rolling onto them when I was asleep. The next day I was still sore all over, and in a bad mood from lack of sleep. Bottom line: Thai massages are overrated! I cannot understand anyone wanting a daily torture session on the beach, but the massage huts are always full. Maybe my particular masseuse was just insane, but I don’t want to risk another session.



Does this look like a massage to you?

I am currently in Thailand, the “elephant kingdom”, although I’ve seen a lot more 7 11’s than elephants.  Thailand is famous for its discount beauty treatments and the current trend is “fish spas.” These spas have tanks full of small fish that bite the dead skin off your feet. This sounds very strange, but it’s been featured on several reality television shows and high-end spas in London include “fish exfoliation” in their spa packages. I shopped around for the best deal in Bangkok and found a spa offering a half hour of fish biting for 150 baht (about 5 dollars.) At that price, who could resist?

 I went to the discount spa with my current travelling friend, a Kiwi named Stacy. When we arrived the fish tanks were full of 18 year old British boys. When we went inside I double-checked with the teenagers to make sure it didn’t hurt, and they assured me it was “so amazing” that they had come the day before and were now back for the second round. With that recommendation, I grabbed a towel and stuck my feet, which were pretty dirty and disgusting after two months in India, into the fish tank.

At first the fish merely circled, then they started to nibble. It tickled more than anything else, especially when they bit between my toes or on the arch of my foot. At any given time 20 or more fish might be nibbling at my feet, which prompted Stacy to ask, “When was the last time you had a pedicure?” Umm…. Never? (Hey, I don’t have any toenails- it would be a waste of money!) Stacey, who gets regular pedicures, had about half the fish action that I did, so maybe I should at least invest in a good scrub or exfoliating device.

my foot being assaulted by the fish

At the end my feet did feel slightly different, and I could feel loose bits of skin that had been partially nibbled by the fishes. Stacy could tell more of a difference because the fish ate her tan, so she had white splotches on her feet. That evening we had an overnight bus to the islands in the south of Thailand. My feet felt a bit uncomfortable, but sometimes with overnight travel my feet swell, so I didn’t think too much about it. The next morning waiting for the ferry, I noticed that my feet were so swollen that I had “cankles” and couldn’t even see my ankle bones anymore. For the next 48 hours it was painful to walk on them. Maybe it was an allergic reaction to the water in the tanks, since it’s probably not cleaned too often. I noticed that my right foot was much more swollen and painful than my left foot, and my right foot was the one the fish were more attracted to. Stacy had the same results with her feet. So maybe the fish themselves are poisonous? Bottom line: Discount fish spas are Not Recommended! Just buy a loofah and get someone to tickle your feet for a few minutes to get the same result minus the pain.

Deadly fish or deadly water?

Thank you, India.. (to borrow a lame phrase from Alanis Morisette). I have finished my two months in India without becoming a “hippie”, addicted to hallucinogenics, or converting to any Eastern religions. The hippies, drugs, and religious experiences were certainly available, however. You could tell exactly how long someone had been in India by the clothes they were wearing. The longer the stay, the brighter and weirder the clothes became. And the most hard-core travelers did things like braiding their beards (in two braids no less-SO UNATTRACTIVE) or getting permanent tattoos of the OM sign.  And for the first time in my life I was offered drugs repeatedly.  Apparently in India I look like someone who wants to buy LSD, but this could just be because after two months my wardrobe did consist of lots of weird Indian pants, saree tops, and embroidered shoes. And  most of the time it was too cold to take a shower on a regular basis, which didn’t help my respectability…

I guess sometimes I did dress a bit "native"

 “Everyone” (aka the other tourists on the Asian circuit) warned me that India is a place you either love or hate. But for me I just kind of liked it. I hated Kolkatta (previously known as Calcutta)- it was truly the dirtiest, most poverty-stricken town I visited and I completely understand why Mother Theresa was based there. I loved the Taj Mahal and riding camels in the desert. I loved my daily cheese garlic naan, but I won’t miss stone cold samosas being served on train stations or rice with coconut chutney for breakfast. I finally read War and Peace (and the ending was completely ridiculous don’t waste your time!) and now that I am an expert on trash fire building, I had a secret dream of running up and down the streets of Varanasi, giving beggars whole chapters of stupid Natasha and Pierre’s life to burn, but instead I traded it in a book exchange. Hey, 100 rupees is a 100 rupees.

So long, nasty train food!

So, “thank you India.” I had my “authentic experience.” I got my henna, I did some sunrise rooftop yoga, I felt the “energy’ at Varanasi, and I got sunburnt in Goa. Maybe I’ll be back, but probably not anytime soon =-)

Sunrise yoga on the rooftop: yeah, I've definitely been to India

If you want to see the rest of my India pics, check out my facebook album.

 A few years back Slumdog Millionaire was up for so many Academy Awards that I had to watch it. I remember certain critics praising it for showing the darker side of India and authentic slum life. Well, after two months in India I have to say that Slumdog Millionaire lied in just a few ways. My favorite part of the movie was the M.I.A song sequence to Paper Planes in which tons of Indian men are riding on top of trains and stealing things by reaching in the windows. Well, let me just tell you that after 7 overnight trains and numerous day trains (and none of them first class) in 7 different states I never saw a single person riding on top of a train. The only excitement was my Australian friends freaking out whenever the cockroaches put in an appearance, which was often. There were also a few mice to spice things up, which made me glad I usually had a top bunk. The top bunk had its drawbacks, however. Once in the middle of the night we were all awakened by piercing screams and the sound of a scuffle. We were afraid someone was being robbed by bandits or attacked in her bed, but it turned out a woman had just fallen out of the top bunk and ripped the curtain down as she fell, awakening her whole compartment. Another nightmare-inducing spectacle were the transvestite beggars who made the rounds wearing sarees it’s not a good look for a man/woman. There were plenty of crazy people inside of the trains, but no one rode on top of the trains.  It just wasn’t necessary if you didn’t have a ticket, you could just sit anywhere you found a spot.  This usually meant that our compartment, which was meant to hold 8, had 15 or more people at any time (with half of them just staring at us).

Typical train station scene

The other major lie in Slumdog was the scene from the Taj Mahal. When we showed up we all expected that tons of teenaged boys would be offering us “tour services,” but in reality it was one place where no one offered to be our guide. The idea was that it was a tomb of two lovers, not a place to go on a tour. It was simply meant to be enjoyed. Slumdog also made us afraid that our shoes would be stolen as soon as we took them off, but you don’t even have to take your shoes off. Your entry fee gets you a decorative gift bag filled with a bottle of water and special shoe covers to wear over your shoes. The Taj was the only place in the whole two months of the tour that someone was robbed, but that was just because she put her credit cards in the outside pocket of her cargo pants. Rookie mistake, could have happened anywhere. Slumdog prepared us for utter chaos and tons of scams at the Taj, but instead it was just really, really beautiful.

no scam artists- just a beautiful background!

Slumdog also prejudiced us against any and all beggars.  The movie clearly showed that the local mafia controlled all the beggars and purposefully gave them deformities. We saw a few beggars with leprosy, but the local newspapers were adamant that leprosy could be cured and any lepers on the street could just come to a free clinic. And I’m pretty sure the local mafia isn’t infecting people with leprosy. We saw lots of street kids, but none with deformities, and our tour leader assured us that food is available free to anyone in the cities who needs it. (I kind of doubt that, but it made me feel less guilty for not giving money.) Surprisingly a lot of beggars were on the plumper side, and one of my friends was even hit by a beggar when she refused to give him money. She refused since he was in the middle of eating a gigantic meal in his begging bowl! The only people I ever saw actually giving money to beggars were Indians on the way back from the temple who were trying to build up their karma. My favorite beggar was a kid who followed me around with a laminated sign around his neck that said, “Help Me! I’m Deaf and Dumb.”  Yet somehow he seemed to hear me just fine when I was offering to buy Cokes for some kids who had given me a tour of the market . When he showed up demanding his coke as well, I just told him it must be a miracle that he was suddenly able to hear and speak, and that his “healing” was all I could give him that day.

Most Indians don’t like Slumdog, but only partially because it is inaccurate. The biggest problem is that there is only one dance number, at the very end of the movie, and that’s simply not acceptable in Bollywood land.  Slumdog‘s an enjoyable movie, but it isn’t quite an accurate portrayal of India. You’re still going to need your Lonely Planet!

Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India. It is located on the Ganges river and everyday the Hindu faithful come to cleanse themselves in this holy water.( They also bring their water buffalo down to drink and wash their clothes here and go to the barthroom here as well. Our guide said we were NOT allowed to get into the water under any circumstances, even though he himself had drunk a glass of Ganges water to purify himself.) The Hindu believe in cremation of their dead and the Ganges is the holiest place to put the cremated ashes. Along the shore there are burning ghats, places where hundreds of the dead are cremated publicly every day and then two weeks later their relatives bring the ashes to float in the Ganges. This burning is believed to purify the bodies, but some deaths do not require this. For example, pregnant women who die, those who are killed by a snakebite, and child corpses are dropped into the Ganges intact with a large stone tied around them. Just another reason to avoid swimming in this town.

Because Varanasi is a holy town, there is no alcohol or meat allowed in the restaurants. Alcohol can easily be found in backroom, under the table kind of joints, but absolutely no meat is to be had. And of course, no cows whatsoever are eaten in India. Even McDonalds has to have a vegetarian and chicken menu only. So one night I was sitting back at a riverside vegetarian café waiting for my spinach pizza, when I suddenly heard a loud clattering noise. One girl assumed it was a bomb going off, since Varanasi was recently the site of a terrorist attack. Another person shouted, “Monkeys!” At this point I lost my cool just a bit, as I have developed a very rational fear of monkeys since my days in Africa. I might have just leaped out of my chair toward our tour guide and grabbed onto him for protection…It’s all a bit hazy.

But it wasn’t a bomb or a monkey invasion- it was the sound of a cow suddenly walking across the tin roof of the restaurant. The town of Varanasi is built on the banks of the Ganges, so there are many levels of shops and stairs. This cow somehow wandered down onto the tin roof and then fell through into the kitchen, directly on top of the pizza stove. The waiters surrounded him and corralled him out of the restaurant, urging the tourists to be quite so he wouldn’t charge into the dining section. 

Once we overcame our shock of the cow in the kitchen, I naturally assumed we would have to find another restaurant, since the cow literally landed on top of the pizza oven and went crazy in the kitchen. Nope; it’s India. The waiter assured us that in 15 minutes they could remake our pizzas. That was the closest a cow will ever get to being on the menu in India! ( see below for the picture of the hole in the roof directly over the pizza oven…)

Indians love movies even more than Americans, and more movies are produced in Bollywood (Bombay movie studios) than Hollywood each year. Top Bollywood actors can star in as many as seven movies a year, mostly due to the fact that a Bollywood movie  takes only 40 days to shoot from start to finish. Since I love Hollywood movies, I thought I should give some Bollywood movies a try. So I hopped into a rickshaw with five of my fellow travellers and our cross-eyed driver took us to the Raj Mandir cinema in Jaipur, one of the most famous movie theaters in all of India.

 

Only one movie was showing, Isi Life Mein. According to the internet reviews it was a teenage drama of a girl from a small town who goes to college in Mumbai and meets a progressive boy who changes her life. The movie was in Hindi without subtitles, but this wasn’t a problem. No subtitles were needed to understand the movie, as most of it consisted of meaningful glances between the two teenage protagonists acompanied by dramatic musical scores. And, to preserve modesty, any potentially “racy” conversations were in English. For example, the two teenagers are eating some street food in a park at night while chatting in Hindi. And then all of a sudden the girl starts speaking English and says, “So, did you and Mimi, you know…” And the guy replies, “What?” Girl: “You know… the S word?” (yes, she really said “The S word”) Guy: (flirting) “You’ll have to be more specific.” Girl: (blushing and looking modestly downward…) “You know, S-E-X” (still can’t say it, can only spell it). Then the movie switches back to Hindi, but it was pretty clear the guy and Mimi had been having a little ‘S word’ action on the side, but only those in the audience who can spell in English would know about it. In this movie the girl also taught her friend not to swear by drinking water (I’ll have to try this technique with my students back home). Again, all of the swear words were in English AND bleeped in the actual movie. The guy and the girl do of course eventually end up together, but only after the guy convinces the girl’s traditional grandmother that he is a worthy candidate for a husband. How does he do this? Well, grandma is very fat and likes to lie on a bed in the main room of the house. In one scene she is trying to get off of the bed and can’t reach her sandals, which are pushed too far under the bed for fat grandma to reach. The guy senses her dilemma and comes to the rescue, fishing the sandals from under the bed and placing them on grandma’s feet. They share a meaningful look accompanied by swelling crescendos of dramatic music, and the girl’s future is sealed. At the end of the movie the guy and girl are leaning in and you think that finally, finally they are going to kiss…. nope. The movie ends with their lips just millimeters apart and then the words “And then it happened” (in English) flash up on the screen, roll credits. Heaven forbid teenagers kiss on screen at the movies!

 

 This movie inspired only eye rolling. The ridiculous plot was actually painful and the chaste but deeply meaningful glances between the two main characters were ridiculous. So the next day we decided to give a different movie a try (this was probably also partly due to the face that the only McDonalds for 100 miles around was located right next to the movie theater, so you could watch a movie and eat a vegetarian Maharaja Mac in the same afternoon. When a movie is only $1.50 and a Maharaja Mac value meal is only $2, why not? ) Our second movie was Tees Mar Khan, the story of a master thief named Tees Mar Khan (TMK) who escapes from his captors and decides to rob a train full of antiques. To carry off his grand heist, TMK pretends to shoot a Bollywood movie in a remote town where the train will be passing through.

This movie included lots of ridiculous but not unexpected twists and turns: there was an albino blind man pretending to be British, two Siamese twins who appear to be joined at the belt, as they always wore jeans with four legs and one belt, and a beautiful girl who gyrates in all the dance numbers. The one thing I have learned about Bollywood however is that nothing is quite as predictable a you think it might be. In one scene of the movie a pregnant woman is watching TV, and next thing you know the fetus is doing a Bollywood dance number in the womb surrounded by mermaids wearing devil horns. Later in the movie the bumbling robbers are running away with money stolen from a bank heist, and suddenly the headless horseman appears and starts chasing them through a misty wood. (This actually did end up having a perfectly reasonable explanation: the headless horseman was running an opium smuggling ring with children he had stolen from the local villages, and TMK was able to break up the drug ring and save the children in his free time from shooting his Bollywood movie and stealing antiques.) Tees Mar Khan was much better than the teenage romance movie, although it also stuck to modesty. TMK mearly nibbled on the ear of his love interest, no lip kisses. And the worst insult, still given in English, was “You dirty dog!”

Our tour leader seemed sad that we found these Bollywood movies ridiculous, so he arranged for us to watch some on DVD so that we would have the benefit of subtitles to aid in our understanding. This actually only made the movies more ridiculous. For example, a character gives his love interest a scrapbook he has made of their time together. And now that there are subtitles we know that he is saying, “This picture is the first time we were in the rain together.” (What? Who took this picture, and why is that important?) We know now that during the song, the lyrics are actually lamenting the fact that due to a break up, “The rain isn’t as wet. The wind doesn’t blow so strong.” (Usually, I would think that is a good thing..)

Bollywood DVD night at the hostel- freezing cold, but the Australians are still wearing shorts!

Our Bollywood DVD marathon also helped us pick up on some Bollywood trends. One is man tears. In the movie Three Idiots, the main character cries five times during the movie, and every other Bollywood film we saw involved men tearing up and breaking down all the time. Another trend seems to be adding sprinklers to dance numbers. You can’t have a good dance number unless suddenly water starts gushing down and everything gets wet (even if the scene is indoors) and maybe the leading man is inspired to take off his tee-shirt. And nothing in a Bollywood movie is ever predictable or makes sense. In the movie Dostana for example, the plot is that two Indian men living in Miami pretend to be gay to get a faster residency permit for living in the US . Of course along the way they both fall in love with the same woman, who never figures out they’re not gay. The mother of one of the fake gay men says to the girl, “Oh, I wish my son wasn’t gay and that he would marry you.” This prompted one of the people watching the movie to roll her eyes and say sarcastically, “Oh, like this isn’t so predictable. Like we don’t know how this will end…” Well, actually, it wasn’t predictable at all. There were still two hours and multiple song and dance numbers for the girl to fall in love with a minor character, an unattractive coworker, and break both of the fake gay boys’ hearts. But the movie did have a fantastic song in which the chorus was “Gay Gay Gay”and the mother did a sad dance lamenting that she would never have grandchildren. It was worth watching just for that….

All of these movies and DVDs have not really made me a convert to the Bollywood scene. I think Hollywood is still much better, maybe because they spend more than 40 days on a movie. But Bollywood does triumph over Hollywood in one area: scandals. For example, a famous Bollywood actor was married at a young age, before becoming famous, and had a wife and several children. After his career took off, he filmed a movie with a hot young actress and had an affair. Now in Hollywood, he would have divorced his first wife after a bitter custody dispute and expensive settlement and then married his new love interest. Not in India. Here, the famous actor just converted from Hindu to Muslim and took a second wife! (I’m willing to bet he’s not observing Ramadan…)You’ve gotta love the options available in India!

  

If you want to see a Bollywood example, check out the mom’s sad dance from Dostana on You-Tube! (sorry, no subtitles)